Lions of the Sea

By Jessi Thind

Based on a true story of a chartered Japanese steamship carrying British subjects prevented from disembarking in Canada in 1914, Lions of the Sea re-creates the voyage of the Komagata Maru through the eyes of an East Indian farmer forced, like thousands of others, to escape famine and poverty and search for prosperity. His story is one of false hopes and broken dreams, yet out of his loss and suffering he learns the lesson of his true status within the British Empire, and the importance of this lesson with World War I looming on the horizon. A heart-warming journey about the very nature of friendship, Lions of the Sea is a powerful tribute to the endurance and dignity of the pioneer spirit that built Canada.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329795792

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Lions of the Sea

Lions of the Sea

Jessi Thind

Copyright

Lions of the Sea© 2001, 2015 Jessi Thind. All rights reserved. 

This is a work of fiction. All characters, their distinctive likeness and related elements featured in this book are registered or unregistered trademarks of the author(s). If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as unsold and destroyed to the publisher. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by an information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.  This is a work of speculative fiction. All of the characters, names, products, incidents, organizations, religions and dialogue in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used satirically, as parody and/or fictitiously.

ISBN 978-1-329-79579-2

PROLOGUE

Budge Budge  September 29, 1914

A full moon shone above while a fierce wind dragged swollen clouds across the sky. One minute there was light, and the next, impenetrable darkness. The air was thick with smoke and the stinging smell of slaughtered humanity. The young turbaned police sergeant smelled the heavy air and listened to the moans and shrieks of wounded men scattered across the grassy plain before him. Watching the sky, he marched through the brush and felt the crunch of dry grass under his feet. He stopped suddenly, sensing something wet and muddy. His heart pounded heavily. His eyes dropped slowly. He had stepped in a pool of blood.  He examined the dark pool, then dragged his eyes across the yellow grass to the body of a man hidden in the shadows. The man was thin and gaunt. He wore a dark turban and a strong beard. His hands were rough and calloused, and they covered and pressed against a fresh wound in his stomach. The blood filled his hands, poured through his fingers, streamed down his jacket, and emptied into the darkness. The sergeant’s eyes slipped over the cotton pants, the three-button European style jacket, and the shining iron kara. At last, his gaze found the man’s face where two dark eyes reflected an incandescent moon and made two gleaming pearls.The British troops trudged along the railway tracks, searched the ditch, and made sure no hiding place had been overlooked. The sergeant squatted beside the body and watched the glowing pearls turn into beads.  He leaned forward and extended his arm to shut the eyes. As his fingers approached the face, the beads turned back to pearls and the eyes blazed with sudden life. The man grabbed the sergeant’s wrist and pulled him closer with startling force. The man wheezed and coughed and struggled with unintelligible words. Then, reaching into his jacket, he revealed a journal and placed it in the sergeant’s hand. My son! he said, Give it to my son! He released the sergeant’s wrist, sighed his last breath, and the pearls were beads again.

The next morning a writer would dispassionately report that a group of treasonous Hindu seditionists had come to agitate the good people of India in a desperate attempt to ignite the fires of revolution and cause civil unrest. The next morning the writer would hide the truth under a mountain of lies and half-truths. But had the writer weighed the story on all scales, seen the story in other lights, perhaps even possessed a different set of eyes; strong and discerning eyes, deeper and darker eyes, eyes free and able to see beyond the distorted peephole of his master, then perhaps that very same writer would have written a slightly different story.  Yes, had the writer served those who lived history rather than those who made, molded, and disguised history, perhaps that writer would have written an entirely different story. A story about fathers. A story about Sikh and Hindu and Muslim fathers who would cross rugged mountains, swim endless seas and face any foe just to put a scrap of food in their baby’s stomach. The sergeant opened the journal and read such a story.

May 1

My son, my dear son, every time I close my eyes I think about you. Now, in the darkness that envelops me, I see you. You are my light: you’re playing games in the field behind our home, chasing monsters and creatures and all sorts of apparitions only you can see; you’re teasing your mother, constantly following her through the village, repeating her every word like a pesky little parrot; you’re chasing lizards all around the yard and trying your very best to evade your morning bath; and now I can see you sleeping in your mother’s arms, your beautiful mother’s arms, much too scared to sleep alone. What were you afraid of?  Are you still afraid? I was once afraid like you and, like you, I slept in my mother’s arms. Never once did I admit this to anyone; but now, to you, I confess: I was afraid. Of what? I still don’t know. Some nameless beast that, if it did exist, existed only in the dark recesses of my mind; but I suppose, for a child, what lives and breathes in the imagination is more real than anything seen or felt or touched by grown-ups.

And now I am afraid. I am more afraid than I have ever been in my life. Afraid of this forced separation that already feels like forever! I wish I didn’t have to leave, but our land is barren; nothing grows, and whatever does struggle out of our desolate soil is stolen from our plates and given to some faraway King who already has too much to eat. Your mother doesn’t eat so that you may eat, and I cannot sleep because I cannot provide. There is nothing left in Punjab for the farmer, and this farmer must take his chances elsewhere within the Empire.

I suppose, at least, there lies one benefit of being a subject: I can search for new land to work on so long as it belongs to the King. I have heard of many, and much better, opportunities in Europe and Asia, but these are all foreign places and I cannot take even the slightest chance with my family’s future; I can afford only one fare and must go to a place where there is no chance of being turned back. Canada is a golden place full of promise and hope for any hardworking subject of the Empire. I’ve heard many rumours from soldiers who have already been there and who have had nothing but good things to say about the land and the people. One soldier even read to the entire village an article from some British newspaper that glorified the Sikh soldier: his strength, his courage, his loyalty in battle. And not too long ago a villager, who reads and understands English, read a leaflet that was practically begging for farmers from all over Europe to move to Canada to take care of unused, lush, fertile land. There’s more good and generous land in Canada than there are people to take care of it; so much that they give it to foreigners! Foreigners who never paid the tax we paid; foreigners who never sent fathers and brothers to war to protect, strengthen, and expand the Empire. I can’t even begin to imagine how they’ll treat a strong Punjabi farmer like me; a man who went hungry to pay their abhorrent taxes, a man who is less because of the friends and family he lost in distant lands to expand and protect the Empire. Canada wants farmers?  They will have no greater farmer! No more missed meals, son. No more tears in the night for a stomach so empty it screams and pounds and refuses to let you drift into forgetful dreams. You and your mother will live in a world of abundance. Abundance! And that, my son, is a promise.

But still there is regret, and the regret for leaving you is agonizing. It weighs heavily on my soul. You cannot even begin to imagine, and will not be able to until you yourself are a father, the anguish, the deep and profound anguish of the father who by no fault of his own cannot provide for his family, and must leave that family to ensure the survival of his name. Even now my heart bleeds when I think of that day I left you. That horrible day will forever be the worst day of my life. Never should a father be separated from his family. Never.

Now, whenever I see a father playing with his child, tears fill my eyes, a mist of despair quickly spreads over me, and I can no longer speak or even think straight for the shame is unbearable. That you refused to say good-bye to your own father is understandable; you are barely five-years-old. And though I understand your anger and deep disappointment, I only wished you were old enough to hear the pain and quivering hesitation in my voice as I tried my very best to win your attention and gain your approval. Then you would have said good-bye. I know it. And though you couldn’t hear the anguish in my voice, your mother did, as she is, and always will be, a master of my thousand and one tones and inflections. It is because of your mother’s divine wisdom that I take you with me, for just as I was leaving she handed me this journal and said, So he will know. And so, my son, my dear beloved son, with this journal I take you with me, and one day, when you are old enough, you will know. You will know that I sacrificed our precious time together, not to escape responsibility, but to bring you every opportunity a father could ever wish upon his son. 

Now I’m in Japan. I’m in an alley near a dock beside a man named Sunny, who, like me, waits to board the Komagata Maru in the morning. He’s a short man with chubby cheeks and a most terrible habit of talking to himself. Often I think he’s talking to me, but, when I ask him to repeat himself, he shakes his head and claims he wasn’t talking to me. I look around to see who he was talking to and figure he probably sees and hears things I cannot see or hear. His turban is tied sloppily and he wears an oversized, travel-wrinkled European suit, which he practically floats in. It was probably handed down from a thicker and taller older brother. He has thick, bristly eyebrows that connect at the ridge of his nose and a wild, black, bushy beard he has probably never attempted to groom or tame in his life.  Now he is nervous because he doesn’t have the fare for passage. But he feels that he might be able to persuade Gurdit Singh, the charterer, to let him board nevertheless. As I write this, he is going through his words, rehearsing his arguments, and doing a pretty decent job at convincing an old busted barrel that when he reaches the Dominion of Canada he will work from dawn to dusk and dawn again just to pay the fare, plus interest.

I’ve heard many things about Gurdit Singh, and one of those things is that he is a shrewd businessman. I have known many shrewd businessmen in my life and none of them were gift-givers. Sunny will ask for free passage and Gurdit will laugh and argue that if he made an exception this time, and the other passengers found out, then everyone would want the same favour and he would no longer be a shrewd businessman but a warm philanthropist. Then he would assure him that there was no profit in philanthropy, and that no philanthropist could successfully charter and provision a ship like the Komagata Maru across an expanse as immense as the Pacific. If I could help Sunny, I would; but I hardly make the fare myself, and to fund this journey we’ve had to mortgage our home and land and borrow money from our kind and most generous neighbours. But not in vain; it will take me about a year or so to settle in Canada and, just as soon as I do, you and your mother will join me, and together we will work hard to save money and bring our neighbours down. 

May 2

Before dawn Sunny and I stood before the Komagata Maru waiting to board. As the sun rose and illuminated the steamer with its golden rays, we took one look at him and then turned to each other with